Tag: natural flavor

Chemical Chow

Christina BruniLeave a comment

How and what a person consumes in terms of food and drink is a personal choice. I’m not going to judge anyone else for chowing down on chemical cuisine. Nor am I going to glorify a person who is a total saint in their nutrition practice.

“Everything in moderation” is what I think is the best approach. Striving to have a healthy balance and not overdoing it with the extreme in either direction.

My aversion to using food and drink “products” containing natural flavor I found out is a real issue after eating two different bags of potato chips within four days of each other. I could taste the different taste between the Siete chips with three real food ingredients and the Deep River regular chips that use canola or safflower or cottonseed oil.

Though the Deep River didn’t use natural flavor I could taste that their chips tasted funny compared to the taste of the Siete chips.

There’s a chemical taste to food using natural flavor too. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) calls natural flavor a drug like crack because it’s an addictive food additive. The EWG goes so far as to say this.

I ordered the Nutrition Action booklet Chemical Cuisine that lists the chemicals in food products that cause ill health like common caramel flavor. The other chemicals in the guide are too numerous to list here.

It can appear that I’m nuts writing about this repeatedly. This shall be the last time I detail my thoughts on the topic of natural flavor. Though trust me real food tastes better.

I would like to say that it’s because I’m Italian American that using chemicals to cook food with leaves a distaste in my mouth. And of course, too I’m a fan of the Slow Food movement that started in Italy at the time of the rise in fast food restaurants there.

I don’t use a microwave either. It’s a matter of personal choice. In the coming blog entry I’ll talk about Choosing Sanity over Vanity in adopting a nutrition practice.

For one as a person who weighs 107 pounds I don’t like when other women tell me either that I’m too thin or else tell me “That’s good!” for fitting into a size 2P. My workout routines and weekly eating plan are not habits that I think 90 percent of Americans would want to adopt.

For the 212 loyal followers to this blog that I have after WordPress deleted the inactive accounts I think the readers who’ve stayed on this long might be the ones getting value from my approach.

Takes what works and leave the rest as the saying goes.

I eat well to feel good. That’s the story.

The Myth of All-Natural Products

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The government does not specify what ingredients are required to label a product All-Natural. In fact products labeled All-Natural often have chemicals in the form of natural flavor. There is nothing All-Natural about these products.

Any food that is a “product” is cheap because it contains chemical additives called natural flavor. The government allows food and drink companies to use the term natural flavor instead of listing the real chemical name.

Food and drink companies use natural flavor because the chemicals are cheap ingredients that lower the cost of making the product. We should not be buying food because it’s cheap. It’s really screwed up when it’s cheaper in America to make yourself sick and more costly to remain healthy.

I would say like others have to pass up on food and drink with chemical additives and ingredients that appear to be chemicals. Simply doing this should help a person maintain their health.

The Myth of Buying Organic Food

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In the Frank Lipman, M.D. book How to Be Well he exposes the following as unhealthful fats to avoid consuming:

corn oil

canola oil

soybean oil

vegetable oil

sunflower oil

safflower oil

and of course palm oil that is not ethically sourced.

The dilemma is that these fats are cheap. They are used in organic food “products” that come in boxes or bags.

This is not real food in its natural state.

Skinny Pop popcorn uses sunflower oil.

The other dilemma is that most organic products use “natural flavor” which is a chemical additive.

I steer clear of consuming any food or drink with natural flavor.

Ginger ale has natural flavor. These chemical additives are everywhere.

Food manufacturers use these fats and chemicals because they’re cheap ingredients. The cheaper the product is to produce the cheaper it can be sold. Which is not how to choose what you eat and drink: by whether it costs only $2 dollars as opposed to $8 dollars.

Those of us who live in poverty should not be forced to subsist on unhealthy food either.

Greenmarket season is in full swing in New York City. People who use SNAP can use their “food stamps” to buy produce at Grow NYC markets. They can get health bucks to use to purchase more food.

You can even use EBT benefits to buy food online at markets to deliver to your home in New York City.

I urge readers not to buy food “products” as a rule.

You’ll pay for it down the road in higher medical costs.

Coming up I will see about posting new recipes I’ve created.

In the next blog entry I will talk about setting long-term goals.

As I near retirement I’ve been thinking long and hard about my life and how I want to live in my Golden Years.

These years should be golden not tarnished with ill health.

How to Eat Healthier – Part Two

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Natural flavor that is a chemical is in nearly every single food product in a supermarket. Even a bag of prepared clams in the frozen aisle. Even in rice cakes. Even in protein bars.

The biggest myth is that protein bars are healthy and give you energy.

They’re loaded with natural flavor and high in sugar. I refrain at all costs from snacking on protein bars anymore. As well, it’s because the bars simply don’t taste good.

I found out that Skinny Pop popcorn–again, a seductively named product–is made with a harmful ingredient. Sunflower oil is man-made.

The book How to Be Well: 6 Keys to a Happy and Healthy Life exposes the real deal about this and other oils.

Coconut oil and olive oil and avocado oil are the best kinds of oil to use. Palm oil if you choose to use it should be labeled “conflict-free” because the harvesting of palm oil can cause harm to rain forest ecology.

The following are unnatural fats and should be avoided at all costs:

Vegetable oil ( there are no vegetables in it)

Margarines and spreads

Canola oil

Corn oil (GMO-laced)

Safflower and Sunflower oil (extracted with hexane, thought to be a neurotoxin) and high in inflammatory fatty acids.

Bet you didn’t think Skinny Pop was harmless. Now you know sunflower oil–one of its ingredients–is high in inflammatory fatty acids.

Peanut oil – also higher in inflammatory fatty acids.

America is a capitalist country. The prevailing business model for food companies and other big business is often “Anything to make a buck.”

Creating and manufacturing food and drink and other products is often predicated in this business model on using the cheapest ingredients and components to rush out quickly products that are sold cheaply.

Yet the products still have a high markup–that is retail price–because the cost of producing them is mere pennies compared to the selling price.

Money is then spent on seductive advertising to get consumers to buy the food and drink and other products.

Alas, too many people if not most people don’t want to spent a lot of money on food and drink upfront.

Then when people become sick and ill they conveniently don’t make the connection between their diet and their disease.

And when most of us fail at maintaining our weight and health via the “calories consumed versus calories burned” guideline we could tend to feel like failures who were responsible for not succeeding.

I tell you based on my own experience: I can’t resist having a pastry from a bakery every two weeks or so. That’s it really.

If you ask me it comes down to common sense again:

If you’re not stuffing your face and going back for second and third helpings at a meal:

Chances are you’re not consuming too many calories in one day.

Like said you can weigh more yet eat fruits and vegetables and be healthy. Or you can be stick thin with a magic metabolism, eat junk, and be flabby and unhealthy.

I’m going to devote a third blog entry to How to Eat Healthier then move along.

After this trio of blog entries I’m going to update the results I’ve achieved in Step Three Perspire of the Changeology 90-day action plan for realizing goals and resolutions.

How to Eat Healthier – Part One

Christina BruniLeave a comment

I’ve gotten on this kick to write about fitness and nutrition again.

There’s no complicated formula. And it’s not as simply as calories consumed versus calories burned off.

The secret to health lies in this one maxim: cut out the sugar, chemicals, and processed food and drink from your diet.

Without exception I can guarantee you that any food product company that makes an emotional claim as to why a boxed or wrapped food is good for you for is LYING.

Special K boasts that their cereal (made with artificial flavors) has 150 Nourishing Calories.

Funny, I didn’t know artificial flavors were nourishing.

Proving the point that 150 calories of junk isn’t worth eating when you can scramble an egg and have it with avocado for breakfast.

Kind Bars boast they have “Ingredients you can see and pronounce.”

Not so fast. Kind Bars are loaded with chemicals listed as “natural flavor.”

You can pronounce the word natural flavor. Yet it’s still a chemical.

The US government doesn’t regulate most chemicals used in food and drink products.

The USDA–whose staff are often food industry company insiders–allows food companies to use chemicals in products without having to list the chemical names.

So chemicals a mile long are listed as “natural flavor.”

Natural flavor is just as artificial as artificial flavor.

Readers, even Nutella isn’t real chocolate.

In the coming blog entry I’m going to talk about the real deal about other food and drink products.

What I’m going to talk about comes from the book How to Be Well: The 6 Keys to a Happy and Healthy Life.

Remember: any product with a seductive name or slick advertisement claim most likely isn’t as healthful as it appears.

Food companies use oils and chemicals that aren’t good to consume because using these cheap ingredients lowers the cost of the product.

Which might entice you to plunk down money to buy the product because it’s so cheap.

Wait a minute.

There’s a better way to save your wallet and your waistline at the same time.

I’ll talk about this next.